Multipurpose Mach Till designed for uniform residue management

WILLIAMSBURG, Iowa — The Kinze Mach Till is a hybrid horizontal tillage tool that can be utilized by farmers in the fall and spring.

“You get the incorporation, land leveling and weed take out you see with conventional horizontal machines and the same speed as vertical till while not creating a smear layer,” said Justin Render, Kinze product specialist.

“The front set of blades moves the soil backwards and to the right and at the back row is where a lot of the inversion of soil happens,” said Render said during a Kinze Media Day.

“The roller has a rise and fall which leaves a micro peak and micro valley on the soil so if we get a rain event, the micro valley gives a place for the water to start infiltrating and the capillary action of the soil starts pulling the water down instead of running off,” he said. “On the peak you have places for gases to exchange so the soil can continue to respirate.”

“A lot of the downside of vertical tillage is you chop it on top, but it’s subject to wind and water so the material ends up in the fencerows,” he said. “The Mach Till keeps the recycling of the materials in place.”

The Mach Till machine is available in 20-, 26-, 30-, 36- and 41-foot widths.

“The blades are spaced 10 inches apart because the gap on each side of the blade allows the kinetic energy of the soil to do the work for us,” Render said.

Farmers can select different blade options for the Mach Till.

“Notched blades in the front and smooth blades in the back is an all-season combination,” Render said. “For fall use, corn-on-corn producers are going to put notched blades on the front and back because they want to size the residue to get it started to break down.”

If the Mach Till is going to be used only in the spring, Render said, farmers typically put smooth blades on the front and back.

“This is a very tailorable machine for what you’re trying to accomplish on your farm,” Render said.

“With our weight distribution system, we take some of the center frame weight and extend it to the wings via the wing cylinders,” he said. “That helps stabilize the arms and the depth.”

The Mach Till tool was tested on a field that had been in the Conservation Reserve Program for 20 years.

“We did a bunch of penetrometer measurements before and after and there was no statistical difference,” Render said. “We’re not creating a stratification layer which you typically have with a plow pass or disk pass.”

For 2022, both the 20- and 26-foot machines will have gauge wheels with hydraulic adjustment.

“A lot of our customers didn’t adjust them equally, which leads to poor performance,” Render said.

In addition, the 20- and 26-foot machines will have a heavy-duty arm option.

“It is really a heavy-duty gang section because the gang is bigger, the torsion elements are bigger and the clamping apparatus is bigger for those guys who want to run the machine deeper,” Render said.

“We have changed the deflector to more of a rolled deflector and we’re mounting it a little differently,” he said.

“We’re going to a new style of roller with a larger gap between our scraper arms,” he said. “In the fall, if you have a really heavy frost and then it starts melting, the corn fodder will get sticky and starts building up, so this gives you more ability for the material to flow through.”

When there is a rolling basket on a tillage machine, Render said, it only comes in contact with the soil every 6 to 8 inches.

“With our roller, you’re touching every inch of the soil and setting the density equal across the field,” he said.

Farmers typically run the Mach Till tools 1.5 to 4.5 inches deep.

“I like to do any tillage at a slight angle and for stalks in the fall a 20-degree angle is good,” Render said. “In the spring, you don’t have to go as aggressive.”

Most farmers go from 9 to 12 mph when utilizing a Mach Till machine, if they have the tractor sized correctly.

“In the spring, farmers go 11 to 12 mph because they typically are not running as deep,” Render said.

For more information about Kinze equipment, go to www.kinze.com.